Monthly Archives: November 2009

Apple has a great example code for drawing fast UITableView using custom, complex UITableViewCells called AdvancedTableViewCells. In the example code, you get three versions and I prefer the one named CompositeSubviewBasedApplicationCell, because it draws your cell as one view, just like Loren Brichter’s Fast Scrolling example.

However, Apple’s example code goes a bit further than Loren’s code and adds example for drawing images, different coloured backgrounds and also has better code for handling highlighted cells in my opinion.

As great as the code is, they left out one small detail that really adds a bit extra to the look of your UITableView, plus I find it makes the text less blurry and easier to read. It only requires a few lines of code for each piece of text you’re drawing. The example code provided is actually from the App Store, which, if you look on your device has the nice white shadow y offset.

There are a couple of things to note in the above code. Firstly, I made a CGPoint from the original code and made the Y location one pixel lower. This is because we’re drawing the shadow first, underneath the original text. After the shadow has been drawn, we just tell the point to move up one pixel and the text will be drawn in the original location from the original code.

Second, you’ll need to set the text colours twice. Note that for the shadow, we need to use [UIColor clearColor] so it doesn’t look weird when highlighted. Also, set the alpha low (you need to check with your cell’s background colour), but make sure it’s not too white. It’ll be really subtle, yet noticeable to anyone who appreciate nice UI design.

Of course it doesn’t work with white cells, but if you’re doing any kind of custom UITableViewCell drawing it’s a nice touch. Here’s how I use it in my app: